It’s a village which lives and breathes theatre. Natyagrama in Odisha’s Khurda district, is a hub of artistic activity. Eighteen artistes of Natya Chetana theatre group are busy rehearsing for their next play, Dhuan (Smoke), in the village. They have been doing so for the last one month to ensure flawless execution. For, Dhuan is being revived after eight years and the artistes aren’t any celebrated ones; they all come from small villages from around the state that have been or are set to be industrialised.
The play was first staged in 2005 at Koraput, Sunabeda, Sonepur, Bhawanipatna, Padampur, Sohela, Talcher, Keonjhar and Jajpur when Odisha was getting ready to face the wave of industrialisation. Later, it was staged once more to mark the 2006 Kalinga Nagar clash when a section of villagers of Jajpur fought against the government over a steel plant project.
The man behind the ‘theatre village’, the theatre group and the play is Subodh Patnaik. He and his team took Dhuan to the Odia Theatre Festival, being organised by the Institute for Promotion and Research on Odisha Culture and Heritage, held between April 12 and 14 in New Delhi. “During 2005, staging Dhuan had become essential to show the impact of industrialisation on the poor masses, and tribals in particular. We thought of reviving it as the government is in the dock over the Posco issue,” says Subodh who is also the vice-president of Odisha Natya Sangha, a body of theatre organisations in the state.
The production is based on information gathered from 10 villages in the tribal-dominated Koraput, particularly in and around Damanajodi where Natya Chetana troupe was touring and conducting theatre workshops.
The format of Dhuan is in the pattern of ‘intimate theatre’ that Natya Chetana intends to popularise as Indian theatre tradition frees from Western influence. So there will be no use of colourful lighting and any elaborate stage settings, but local musical instruments. The accent is on the actors’ body language, with the body being made flexible enough to serve as props.
“Theme of Dhuan packs in a social message. Owners of industries exploited the poor who were taken in by the fake words and actions, in other words, just smoke,” says Subodh. Natya Chetana, which celebrated its silver jubilee in 2011, performs two types of theatre—‘intimate theatre’ for the urban audience and ‘cyco theatre’ for rural people, explains Subodh. So far, the troupe has produced 26 long plays and 43 short plays, winning critical appreciation at the state, national and international levels.
Last year, Mathiea Pani (a pot of water)—a play presented by Natya Chetana’s touring theatre troupe set a rare record by being staged more than 100 times.
The play shows the tragic reality faced by rural women who have to fetch water from faraway places, according to Subodh who scripted and directed it. “There have been projects and efforts to manage water in villages, but without proper involvement of women in planning and execution. The play provokes a debate on the issue of water vis-a-vis women,” he says.
The 24-member Natya Chetana troupe undertook a cycle expedition across 101 villages of Ganjam district last year covering nearly 500 km and the play was staged in every village, he recalls. The project has been supported by Canada-based social development agency One Drop and Gram Vikash of Berhampur. “We conduct research in any area before the cycle expedition and script the play after observing the social reality. Hence the plays touch the hearts of the masses as they tell their tale,” he says.
Another notable play from Natya Chetana is Chring Chring, dramatised by Subodh from Mohapatra Nilamani Sahu’s short story, Bihanga Biplaba. Similar to the Sufi fable, The Conference of the Birds, the winged denizens of the forest, fed up with the lawlessness of the monkeys—cronies of the King Bear—and corruption in the court of justice, revolt and take over the reins of government.
The idea behind Natya Chetana, as the name would suggest, is to spread awareness about theatre, through theatre.
The idea took shape in 1989, when the group was readying for a performance at the Rabindra Mandap. When their booking was cancelled at the last moment to accommodate an official function, the artistes viewed it as a slight to theatre. After a protest sit-in, they vowed never to go back to Rabindra Mandap, perhaps the only theatre auditorium in Bhubaneswar. But they had to find a way to present their plays. Thus was born ‘intimate theatre.’
“There are two major constraints faced by theatre groups anywhere today... lack of funds and non-availability of an auditorium. We had to find a way out and we did,’’ says Subodh, who graduated from Utkal Sangeet Mahavidyalaya, Odisha’s premiere college of performing arts.
Besides writing and directing socially-relevant plays, Subodh has adopted plays from short stories of Odia literature written by eminent writers like Fakir Mohan Senapati, Surendra Mohanty, Pranabandhu Kar, Manoj Das, Pratibha Ray, among others. “Besides, Natya Chetana is working for bringing to limelight women in theatre circle. Till now if you look around, there is no woman in Odisha who is a playwright or theatre director. Hence, we have been training talented women theatre artistes on acting, play-writing and direction. Natya Chetana takes care of designing women characters in its plays like in Kaatha, Geeta, Reboti, Mayajala, etc,” he says.